January 17, 2009

Problems for LabourList

A Labour Party apparatchik called Derek Draper set up LabourList as a counter to the wildly successful Conservative Home last week. The only trouble, he’s very close to Peter Mandelson, and unlike the Tory version, LabourList is seen as being too close to the party’s leadership.

Derek’s other problem is a dislike for humour or dissent. He’s been accused of heavily censoring comments left by members of the public, and generally treating the site’s users like poo.

So someone’s set up Labourist. Lacking a certain, er… ‘L’, the site is identical to LabourList, but anyone can leave comments.

It seems completely legal at the moment – LabourList encourages people to use the data on the site elsewhere.

It’d be pretty funny if Labourist turned out to be more popular, made more money from advertising and had more of an effect on the party than the original version – very “bottom-up”.